As noted in the other thread, I arrived at Island Lake after a warm weekend. But fortunately it snowed 6 inches of dense snow overnight. The outgoing flurries early Monday morning at the lodge during the transceiver drill were barely snow at all.
This storm and Monday’s overcast worked to our advantage. The high north facing alpine in the Lizard Range had stability issues, so we were skiing the Mt. Baldy and Mt. Fernie trees all day. These have sunny exposure, but there was no sun Monday and the new snow was dense enough to keep us off the subsurface. I recall in 2022 we had a similar amount new snow but it was low density and with temps of 0F we frequently hit a very solid subsurface.
I rarely take pics on tree skiing days but Island Lake’s photographer was along for the first half of our day. This is what a pro can make me look like skiing.
He also captured crashes well.
Coming into a pickup:
Group pic in front of the lodge:
Monday we skied 12,400 vertical, not bad for day one after safety drills and all in the trees.
Tuesday was sunny, breakfast view from the lodge:
We hit adjacent tree runs in the morning to those we had skied Monday, because we knew the sun would make them unskiable after that until the next new snow.
Early afternoon we moved into lower parts of the alpine. Here we have views back to the areas we had been skiing. Sunnyside on Baldy:
Mt. Fernie:
In both of the above pics you can see the ideally spaced trees. This is what you can do when you own your cat skiing terrain instead of leasing it from the government. There are other advantages too. Cat roads can be built efficiently. That’s part of why we ended up with 19,100 vertical Tuesday, very unusual when you don’t get the extra long runs from the highest alpine drop points.
As I have mentioned in prior reports, Island Lake has its own hydropower from its lake and thus can built its more luxurious lodges and still rarely need backup generators.
More open terrain from Tuesday afternoon:
Face Shots Left, a favorite run for most us both Tuesday and Wednesday:
I suspected Wednesday would be a challenge with overcast limiting the alpine and much of the tree skiing crusted over from Tuesday’s sun. But the guides Joel and Greg presumably saw the weather forecasts and planned our tour accordingly. We got that one more run on Face Shots Left before the wind kicked up and created concern about wind loading above exposed areas.
Most of the day was tree skiing north facing runs of about 700 vertical below the alpine. View up at some of that:
View of the lake and lodge during a brief sunny break:
We skied 13,100 on Wednesday. This was a quite gung-ho group. A couple of Bay Area guys who had been there 2 years ago brought 4 of their 20-something kids, who were often seeking out air time opportunities.
Here’s a map:
It’s full resolution if you want to examine more closely.
And here’s the run list:
I had some concern about slowing down the group, but only had two crashes. My suck wind breaks generally coincided with regrouping stops. I thought I had a slow start Wednesday, but seemed to loosen up and feel better after the Face Shot Left encore run. The manicured tree skiing here was extremely helpful. Even if I was one of the last skiers I nearly always could find an untracked line. Skiing in tracked or variable snow, especially as dense as this was, will exhaust me fast these days. That’s why I’ve been calling it at 2PM on Iron Blosam new snow days the past couple of years.
This storm and Monday’s overcast worked to our advantage. The high north facing alpine in the Lizard Range had stability issues, so we were skiing the Mt. Baldy and Mt. Fernie trees all day. These have sunny exposure, but there was no sun Monday and the new snow was dense enough to keep us off the subsurface. I recall in 2022 we had a similar amount new snow but it was low density and with temps of 0F we frequently hit a very solid subsurface.
I rarely take pics on tree skiing days but Island Lake’s photographer was along for the first half of our day. This is what a pro can make me look like skiing.
He also captured crashes well.
Coming into a pickup:
Group pic in front of the lodge:
Monday we skied 12,400 vertical, not bad for day one after safety drills and all in the trees.
Tuesday was sunny, breakfast view from the lodge:
We hit adjacent tree runs in the morning to those we had skied Monday, because we knew the sun would make them unskiable after that until the next new snow.
Early afternoon we moved into lower parts of the alpine. Here we have views back to the areas we had been skiing. Sunnyside on Baldy:
Mt. Fernie:
In both of the above pics you can see the ideally spaced trees. This is what you can do when you own your cat skiing terrain instead of leasing it from the government. There are other advantages too. Cat roads can be built efficiently. That’s part of why we ended up with 19,100 vertical Tuesday, very unusual when you don’t get the extra long runs from the highest alpine drop points.
As I have mentioned in prior reports, Island Lake has its own hydropower from its lake and thus can built its more luxurious lodges and still rarely need backup generators.
More open terrain from Tuesday afternoon:
Face Shots Left, a favorite run for most us both Tuesday and Wednesday:
I suspected Wednesday would be a challenge with overcast limiting the alpine and much of the tree skiing crusted over from Tuesday’s sun. But the guides Joel and Greg presumably saw the weather forecasts and planned our tour accordingly. We got that one more run on Face Shots Left before the wind kicked up and created concern about wind loading above exposed areas.
Most of the day was tree skiing north facing runs of about 700 vertical below the alpine. View up at some of that:
View of the lake and lodge during a brief sunny break:
We skied 13,100 on Wednesday. This was a quite gung-ho group. A couple of Bay Area guys who had been there 2 years ago brought 4 of their 20-something kids, who were often seeking out air time opportunities.
Here’s a map:
It’s full resolution if you want to examine more closely.
And here’s the run list:
I had some concern about slowing down the group, but only had two crashes. My suck wind breaks generally coincided with regrouping stops. I thought I had a slow start Wednesday, but seemed to loosen up and feel better after the Face Shot Left encore run. The manicured tree skiing here was extremely helpful. Even if I was one of the last skiers I nearly always could find an untracked line. Skiing in tracked or variable snow, especially as dense as this was, will exhaust me fast these days. That’s why I’ve been calling it at 2PM on Iron Blosam new snow days the past couple of years.
